


restless nights and blanket kicks

by flowerhyunjins



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe — High School, Angst, have fun guys, i write nothing but angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 10:15:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16763125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerhyunjins/pseuds/flowerhyunjins
Summary: imagine being a teacher who had to witness their own student die slowly in front of their eyes, all while they couldn’t do anything about it.or actually, to put it simply,imagine being in seo changbin’s shoes.





	restless nights and blanket kicks

they say seo changbin broke inside the day it happened.

they say the strings inside him that kept him together snapped that very night, and no matter how hard he tried to make it seem like they were still intact on the outside, anyone could tell that wasn’t the case. seo changbin detached himself from reality, and that was the end of it.

the first time chan met the guy, he was simply the guy next door. the first things he noticed were his crooked glasses resting on the bridge of his nose and his ever shaking hands. the room wasn’t cold. he wasn’t nervous. no. they all say they tremble because of the emotional trauma, but rumours will stay rumours to chan until he finds them officially confirmed.

the second time chan met him was when he was still a newbie at the school. he had only befriended school counsellor kim woojin at the time, making him chan’s only friend. he was told to take some papers to woojin when woojin stopped him before he left his room.

“hey chan?” he called.

“yeah?” chan turned around, catching himself.

“check on changbin in his room, will you? just to see if he’s doing alright,“ woojin softly requested.

though it was odd, chan complied. “sure.”

and he went right back upstairs to his own room and made sure to check next door. though he saw changbin at his desk, head resting on his palm as he clicked away at his computer, he still softly knocked twice on the door, waiting until changbin emitted any kind of noise. when there was none, chan peeked through the slim window on the door, finding changbin, still sitting, facing the door confusedly.

so, chan lets himself in. “u-um…hi. woojin wanted me to check on you?”

_chan glanced down at his hands. barely visible, but still trembling._

changbin smiled. “hm, nice to know he still does that. thanks.”

“you’re welcome,” chan mumbled, and when changbin turned away, busying himself with something else, chan left the room without another word.

this goes on every thursday. chan would have documents sent to him in the morning for him to complete, then send down to woojin, then go back upstairs and briefly check on changbin. in the sense that they both had no classes to be taught at that exact hour, chan finally strikes up a conversation.

“how long have you…um, worked here?”

“this is my 4th year,” changbin hummed.

“you’re friends with woojin?”

“yup,” changbin responded, “he was the first person i really talked to when i got here. not much of a surprise from a counsellor huh?”

chan smiled at that. “what about him? how long has he been here?”

“oh i don’t know. 6, maybe 7 years? it’s been a while.”

so chan learned that day that every teacher in that school might as well have been friends with woojin. every newbie who came in? woojin would approach them to see if they needed help. mostly, once they could stand on their own two feet, woojin let them go like they let him go, but he still kept some of them close. a special two; lee minho and han jisung.

my _god_ were those two the rowdiest pair chan’s ever seen in his life. jisung’s external behaviour was the physical embodiment of a race car, landing him the perfect slot as the physical education teacher. and as for minho? well, minho…was one of a kind, if chan wanted to put it nicely. the brutal truth was that he was just…weird. but he figured it just came with the fact that he taught drama.

and once at lunch, with all of them seated together at one table, chan speaks at the odd time jisung isn’t, “seo changbin.”

this sparks a fiery interest in minho. “changbin! yeah, what’s up?”

“he…is he okay?”

the group falls silent, but not in the awkward sense. minho sits there, pondering a way to put it so that chan would get the overall sense, but there was no use. minho couldn’t sugarcoat the tragic truth. none of them could, so jisung told him what happened.

“last year…a student committed suicide.”

chan exhaled. “oh. that’s… _awful_ , i’m sorry. did you all know him?”

“we talked a few times,” woojin spoke, “none of which were bright encounters.”

“me too,” minho added, “he was shy, and it’s a shame drama wasn’t an elective. i let him skip all the stage performances and let him do other projects for the marks.”

“jisung?”

jisung sucked in a deep breath before responding. “yeah i knew him alright. i knew kim seungmin like i knew the back of my palm, but _god_ , chan hyung, no one knew him as much as changbin did. not even his own best friends.”

jisung pointed to a table not far from them where 3 students sat. one had a camera by his side as he was immersed in what seemed to be picture editing on his laptop. the other two were talking, almost practically radiating, but it was almost as if even they couldn’t light up the space beside the first boy, waiting to be filled but alas, it never seemed to come.

“i think he and hwang hyunjin had it the hardest,” jisung told him, “it was like they both lost a piece of themselves.”

no more words about seungmin were exchanged for the rest of the period. chan climbs back upstairs with newfound knowledge in his head, and the inability to ever look at changbin without thinking of everything he kept inside him. no, his personal image of changbin wasn’t destroyed, just…more accurate. changbin doesn’t have to hide it from him anymore. he could be the changbin chan was supposed to know since the beginning.

~

“s-seungmin?” changbin whispered.

“if it’s too hard…you don’t have to,” chan mumbled, looking down at his feet kicking away at the air.

“no it’s…okay. i mean, it’s about time i talked about it, right? besides, you’re new. it’s easier,” changbin sighed, voice trembling ever so slightly this time.

chan grabbed a chair and moved closer towards the other. at first, it was silent, like changbin was trying to figure out what to say and chan was just preparing himself, but when the words came flowing out of changbin’s mouth, they were flowing out like a waterfall, and changbin didn’t know how to stop.

“he stayed here a lot,” changbin told him, “when it was free period, or lunch, he’d be up here, and so would i. we never talked about anything important, but it’s the little things that matter, yeah? a year of small talk gets you places. it felt like i knew him even before we talked about his favourite band. and even from there on, he wouldn’t shut up.”

and after the short huff of laughter, the soft smile on changbin’s lips fade as quickly as it came, realizing what came after. the spark in his eyes died after briefly recalling the bittersweet memories of the boy. his hands almost seemed to have stop trembling when he talked about seungmin, almost as if he were still alive. but no, reality came crashing down at once. seungmin was not alive, and changbin was not okay, no matter how much he tried to make it seem as so.

“you stayed. why?”

“i couldn’t leave, chris,” changbin told him, “these kids…”

“they need you,” chan finished. “yeah, i get that.”

changbin smiled and nodded. “if i did leave, it probably would’ve hurt more. i couldn’t leave them like s- like he did.”

chan gets to know changbin a little better that day. he leaves the room, the previously internalized gap between them now filled, content present in his heart. chan teaches the coming classes a bit better that day, changbins words still lingering in his mind even after school hours ended long ago.

it was odd, how chan could empathise with the other, even though he’d never been through what changbin had. he could never imagine the pain and regret, but even so, changbin feels as if chan was slowly fixing him, little by little, one step at a time.

_the guy next door, out of everyone._


End file.
